“Which will allow us to stay out of the eye of the ground radar system?” Pitt asked.
“You nailed her. Because of our changing angle to the radar station, we’ll have to constantly adjust our position behind the freighter in order to duck the signal. We just can’t chug right alongside her or else we’d be detected at the fringe angles. If the helmsman keeps us locked in the indicated shadow, then we have a darn good chance of sailing past Bathurst like the Invisible Man.”
Stenseth studied the computer, then turned to the helmsman. “Let’s put it to the test before we get in range. Engines ahead one-third. Take us five hundred yards off her port beam, then match speed.”
“And play Shadow Driver?” the helmsman asked with a grin.
“If this works, you’ve got a six-pack on me, Jack,” the captain said.
“Make it a six of Lone Star and you’re on,” he replied with a wink.
The Narwhal kicked it with an extra burst of speed until the running lights of the freighter flickered off the bow. The helmsman nudged the NUMA ship to port and continued drawing closer.
“One thing worries me,” Stenseth said, eyeing the rust-streaked freighter. “Hanging closer to her side for any length of time is liable to generate a radio call from her captain. And I’m sure our Canadian friends at Bathurst have ears as well as eyes.”
“My insurance policy,” Pitt muttered. “I nearly forgot.”
He stepped down to his cabin, then returned a few minutes later with the triangular package he had purchased in Tuktoyaktuk.
“Try running this up,” he said, handing the package to Stenseth. The captain ripped open the package, unfurling the Canadian maple leaf flag that was folded inside.
“You really want to sail in harm’s way,” Stenseth said, displaying the flag with uncertainty.
“It’s only for the freighter’s benefit. Let them think we’re part of Canada’s Arctic ice patrol. They’ll be less likely to question us hanging on their flank for a few hours.”
Stenseth looked from Pitt to Dahlgren, then shook his head. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of a shooting war with you guys.”
Then he promptly ordered the flag run up the mast.
With the maple leaf rippling overhead in a stiff westerly breeze, the Narwhal drew alongside the Korean freighter and matched lurches in the wallowing sea. Together they sailed through the short night and into a bleak gray dawn. On the bridge, Pitt kept a tense vigil with Stenseth, spelling the helmsman while Giordino appeared every hour with mugs of strong coffee. Holding the research ship in the freighter’s shadow through the turbulent waters proved to be a taxing job. Though the freighter was a hundred feet longer than the Narwhal, the distance between the two vessels made for a narrower shadow path. Dahlgren’s computer program proved to be a godsend, and Stenseth happily agreed to increase his beer debt with each hour they advanced undetected.
When the vessels reached due north of Bathurst, the men on the bridge froze when a call suddenly came over the radio.
“All stations, this is Coast Guard Bathurst calling vessel at position 70.8590 North, 128.4082 West. Please identify yourself and your destination.”
Nobody breathed until the Korean ship responded with its name and destination, Kugluktuk. After the Coast Guard acknowledged the freighter, the men fell silent again, praying there would be no second radio call. Five minutes passed, then ten, and still the radio remained silent. When twenty minutes slipped by without a call, the crew began to relax. They sailed for three more hours glued to the side of the freighter before passing well clear of the radar station without detection. When the Narwhal reached a bend in the Amundsen Gulf that put Bathurst out of the line of sight, the captain increased speed to twenty knots and zipped past the lumbering freighter.
The Korean ship’s captain studied the turquoise ship with the maple leaf flag fluttering overhead as it steamed by. Training his binoculars on the Narwhal ’s bridge, he was surprised to see the crew laughing and waving in his direction. The captain simply shrugged his shoulders in confusion. “Too long in the Arctic,” he muttered to himself, then resumed plotting his course to Kugluktuk.
“Well done, Captain,” Pitt said.
“I guess there’s no turning back now,” Stenseth replied.
“What’s our ETA to King William Island?” Giordino asked.
“We’ve just over four hundred miles to go, or about twenty-two hours through these seas, assuming the lousy weather hangs with us. And we don’t encounter any picketboats.”
“That’s the least of your problems, Captain,” Pitt said.
Stenseth gave him a questioned look. “It is?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pitt replied with a grin, “for I would like to know where in the Arctic you plan on locating two cases of Lone Star beer.”
52
Kugluktuk, formerly called Coppermine after an adjacent river, is a small trading town built on the banks of Coronation Gulf. Situated on the northern coast of Canada’s Nunavut province, it is one of just a handful of populated havens lying north of the Arctic Circle.
It was the deepwater port offerings that attracted Mitchell Goyette to Kugluktuk. Kugluktuk represented the closest port facility to the Athabasca oil sand fields in Alberta, and Goyette invested heavily in order to stage a terminus for exporting his unrefined bitumen. Cheaply acquiring a little-used rail line from Athabasca to Yellowknife, he financed the expansion of the line north to Kugluktuk. With special snow-clearing locomotives leading the way, a long string of tank cars transported twenty-five thousand barrels of bitumen on every trip. The valuable heavy oil was then off-loaded onto Goyette’s mammoth barges and sent across the Pacific to China, where a tidy profit awaited.
With the next railroad shipment several days away, Goyette’s Athabasca Shipping Company rail terminus sat ghostly quiet. The icebreaker Otok sat at the dock, an empty barge tied to its stern. Two more of the massive barges were moored out in the bay, riding high above their waterlines. Only the rhythmic pumping of a fuel line filling the icebreaker’s tanks with diesel fuel gave an indication that the boat and dock were not completely deserted.
No such illusions were evident inside the ship, where an engaged crew made advance preparations for departing port. Seated inside the ship’s wardroom, Clay Zak twirled a glass of bourbon over crushed ice as he examined a large chart of the Royal Geographical Society Islands. Sitting across from Zak was the Otok’s captain, a puffy-faced man with gray hair cut close to the scalp.
“We’ll be refueled shortly,” the captain said in a heavy voice.
“I have no desire to spend any more of my life in Kugluktuk than necessary,” Zak replied. “We leave at daybreak. It looks to be about six hundred kilometers to the Royal Geographical Society Islands,” he said, looking up from the chart.
The skipper nodded. “Ice reports are clear all the way to King William Island and beyond, and this is a fast ship. We’ll be there easily in about a day’s sail.”
Zak took a sip of his bourbon. His hastily arranged trip to the Arctic had been undertaken without a detailed plan, which made him uncomfortable. But there was little to go wrong. He would drop a team of Goyette’s geologists on the north coast of the main island to search for the ruthenium mine, while he examined the Mid-America mining operations in the south. If necessary, he would put Mid-America out of business with the aid of an armed team of security specialists he had brought aboard, along with enough explosives to detonate half the island.